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Prefuse 73 - Preparations
Electronic musician Guillermo Scott Herren, a.k.a. Prefuse 73, has spent years building some of the most elaborate and abstract hip-hop productions on the market today; thing is, they’re aren’t really on the market. Rather than auctioning his wares to the highest bidder, Herren weaves his tracks together into loose instrumental albums, bringing in a guest MC if he feels like it. Preparations, his latest, features plenty of vocals, but barely any intelligible English, let alone rapping.
Like Aphex Twin, Herren twists hip-hop conventions into distended, abstract forms, occasionally stumbling sideways into near-arrhythmia; and like The Avalanches and Fennesz, he's a master at reshaping samples and found sounds into fully original compositions. Melodies swoon, stutter, and fall away, dodging between the beats like shiny bipolar fish. “Aborted Hugs” melds the thuggish bravado of someone like Swizz Beats with the introspective glide of DJ Premier, and without an MC to steal the limelight the track breathes comfortably inside a hardcore-brief runtime of 1:29. “Smoking Red,” which samples the kitwork of Battles' John Stanier, seethes with a viciousness not often seen outside hard-rock circles. Just when the tracks seem about to relax into sushi-bar trip-hop, he floods the mix with bizarro vocal samples or glitchy breakdowns.
Herren’s Prefuse 73 albums (he records under several aliases) have the distinction of creating emotions, stories, entire worlds through pure sound. While Preparations lacks the brand-newness of his debut Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives or the unhinged psychodrama of the modern classic One-Word Extinguisher, it proves Herren’s gift for off-kilter rhythms and sample-based melancholia is stronger than ever.
Holy Fuck - Holy Fuck
And our second instrumental album of the day comes from, that's right, another hot-shit indie band from Toronto. And guess what else? They mop the floor with their southern brethren without breaking a sweat. When are we getting our public arts education funding back, huh Congress?!
The high-concept description of Holy Fuck runs something like "Trans Am with no guitars, ever." The swirling synths, chugging rock beats and structural minimalism certainly point up to that band's influence: the songs start, they get louder, and then they stop, like Can with a case of beer instead of a PhD in anarchist theory. But there’s a fascinating current of improv experimentation that leads to fascinating rhythmic and melodic detours; in interviews, the band point to that improv element as integral to the band's sound. Indeed, “Super Inuit,” the first track on the Holy Fuck LP, is a live recording, and sounds appropriately hot and sweaty. No guitars here, just lots of sick kit-smashing (drummer Glen Milchem is a beast), carefully integrated machine-beats, swirling synths galore, and, besides the crowd noise at the end of track one, a near-absence of vocalizing. It's good party background/mix tape fodder, but since the members of Holy Fuck put such a premium on their live show, you can't help thinking you're only seeing half the picture. It would be interesting to see them put out a series of live records, like an improv jazz trio or something.
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